The children had peered down like perpetrators of an awful crime, as the water thundered around the toilet sending droplets over the sides. Alice shrank back as splashes landed on the wooden seat. They were the splashes she had previously misunderstood when using the toilet. She had cleaned them up with wads of toilet paper and pinched lips before being prepared to sit down on the yawning wooden seat. The match-insect shot up and down and was still there when the water was quiet. Eleanor made them stand there until the iron cistern had filled so they could try again. They were squashed together in the cramped room smelling of smoke, waiting as the hissing got higher and higher and fizzled to a stop.
As Eleanor pulled the chain a second time, Mrs Ramsay appeared. Alice had thought she’d heard her going out. She had not heard footsteps although she had been listening out. Alice had paid no attention to Eleanor’s explanation about the matches. It was one of her stories.
‘What are you girls up to?’ Mrs Ramsay rubbed the sides of her nose with her hands. Alice started explaining the smell was nothing to do with her, that she had not been to the toilet or set fire to the toilet, but Eleanor was speaking:
‘I was showing Alice the matches, so she knows what do to when she does a poo. She was asking.’ Eleanor slid the box shut and put it back on the windowsill beside the pile of Harper’s Bazaar magazines that Alice never touched because of germs.
‘Oh, I see.’ Mrs Ramsay behaved as if she didn’t recognise Alice, but must have for she went on: ‘Do go ahead, Alice, just don’t be stupid with them.’ Alice couldn’t get out because Mrs Ramsay blocked the doorway. ‘Elly, come out. Let’s leave Alice to do her poo.’
‘Oh, I don’t do that. I mean, I don’t need…’ Alice nearly fainted with misery at the way things were turning out. ‘I don’t need to be in here.’ Alice ducked past Mrs Ramsay. Her voice squeaked like one of Lucian’s animal characters, but no one laughed. She couldn’t say she only went in the mornings after breakfast. She had been told it was rude to talk about toilets.
To Alice’s amazement, Eleanor’s mother then went into the lavatory and left the door slightly open. They could have seen her on the toilet if they had stayed to look, but Eleanor led the way back to the dining room, far more interested in her stupid picture.
Alice hadn’t thought Mrs Ramsay went to the toilet. She was so beautiful it wasn’t possible that either she or Doctor Ramsay ever needed to go. She tried not to think of Mrs Ramsay sitting in the spider-webbed room with the cracked walls and the smoky smell. She blushed as, despite herself, she imagined Mrs Ramsay with her knickers down with a snatch of whiteness followed by a darkness impossible to contemplate. Alice had been angry. Eleanor should not have made Mrs Ramsay think she wanted to do Number Twos in the middle of the day. Her Mum kept an aerosol of fresh pine trees in their toilet under a Spanish dancer with a wide skirt. Surely her Mum was right? Surely there was a God?
‘I know a secret about you.’
The effect of her words had been better than she could have hoped for. Alice snatched up the packet of serviettes her mother had left out on the sideboard. She could hear Eleanor chattering on in the hall. Someone called her name, but Alice pretended not to hear. Then she heard Eleanor giggle. She wished her Dad would come home and be on her side. There would be no one on her side if they heard what she had said to Eleanor about Mrs Ramsay. She had only said it because of the matches and the poo.
When they had got back to the dining room table, Alice had sneaked a look at Eleanor as she leaned over her picture. Her nails had green rims and her hands were always scratched and rough. Her hair needed a proper brush and that day there had been a grey smear across her forehead as well as a bruise on her arm from climbing on to the conservatory roof to fetch a tennis ball earlier in the day. Alice had been relieved when it landed there, the game would be over. But Eleanor had worked her way up the drainpipe, pulling with her hands and pushing with her feet and thrown it down. She never kept still, but must always whizz about. Even in the dining room when they were drawing, Eleanor was bouncing about on her chair. She never walked properly. She had to do cartwheels and handstands. She kept on at Alice to do a handstand, knowing perfectly well that Alice couldn’t bear being upside down, not even to have her hair washed.
Alice knew she could draw better than Eleanor, whose pictures made no sense and used up too much crayon. That day the room had been littered with bits of oil pastel and curls of peeling paper torn off to free more crayon. Alice was glad they weren’t her crayons. All she could think about after the matches was how to hurt Eleanor.
Eleanor’s feet had been tucked up under her and she was very worked up about her picture, which she said was of herself as a pilot in an aeroplane. She didn’t even paint properly. She had gone on and on, saying the sun she was drawing was scalding hot, even touching the paper and acting burned. She hadn’t answered when Alice asked if it was her best picture.
Now her Mum was showing Eleanor the barometer in the hall. This infuriated Alice, her Dad’s barometer was nothing to do with Eleanor. Alice went over to the table and poked the side of the jelly with her finger, and nicking a hole in it, quickly licked her finger.
‘I know a secret about you.’
She had stared hard at Eleanor’s face, but Eleanor had carried on with her drawing. Say it again, louder. Then Eleanor had lied, saying secrets were stupid.
‘Not all secrets are stupid.’
‘What is it then?’
Alice had been worried that Eleanor really wasn’t bothered. She had to make her bothered. The jelly was soft and cool, lapping over her fingers.
‘If it was me, I would care about it, because it’s a huge secret.’
She had wanted to pull Eleanor’s hair and punch her. Eleanor went on colouring as if she was alone and Alice had gone. Alice might have said her three-year-old cousin could draw better. The sun wasn’t that big and Eleanor was a girl so she could not be a pilot.
The kitchen clock struck four. Eleanor had arrived early. Zebedee tipped out into the roundabout clock face four times. Alice had loved the clock when her Dad brought it home. Now she picked up the plate with the cubes of cheese stuck on to wooden sticks, and thought of smashing it into the clock, pushing the cheese into the hole for the characters and gumming up the hands. Instead she tipped them on to the floor. The cheese scattered across the lino. They wouldn’t be eating cheese. Her fingers were sticky from the jelly and the plate slipped out of her hands and landed with a thump on top of the bits of cheddar.
Eleanor had tried to pretend she was looking for a black crayon on the floor. Alice had not let her leave the room and enjoyed swishing her ruler like the cruel supply teacher they had last term. For a moment Alice had been happy, then she had seen her own picture. It no longer looked so good, with tiny pencil lines scribbling off the page. She had crumpled the paper into a ball, which she tossed back and forth in her cupped hands as Lucian did with a cricket ball. Eleanor had not dared look for the crayon and with some shock Alice saw Eleanor was trying not to cry. Then Alice wanted to leave and she said she must get home even though she was meant to be staying for tea. There had been no sign of Mrs Ramsay and the toilet door was firmly closed as Alice rushed away, abandoning her favourite pink cardigan to the wolves.